Pictured above are a group of school teachers in the Eastern city of Kenema, Sierra Leone. This group of teachers has come to SMT, a partner of Kiva.org, to apply for a loan of 13,000,000 Leones in order to meet their immediate financial challenges. Some will use their share of the loan to pay school fees for their children, others will invest it in business, some will buy house building materials, etc. And at the end of each month, they repay the loan, using their monthly salaries. It is their school’s bursar who is directly responsible for doing the deductions and making the repayments on their behalf.

Bernadette is the featured leader of this group. A native of Daru, in Eastern Sierra Leone, the 61-year-old is a widow with five children. Bernadette is a school teacher and has been in the teaching profession for 40 years. She has requested this loan in order to pay school fees.

Additional Information

About Salone Microfinance Trust (SMT)

Salone Microfinance Trust (SMT) is Kiva’s oldest field partner in Sierra Leone. SMT began operations in 2002 as a microcredit program of the NGO Child Fund Sierra Leone under a USAID program to assist the reintegration of ex combatants back into their communities. Today, SMT offers group, agricultural, individual and salary loans to micro-entrepreneurs through six branches and one sub-branch in rural, urban, and peri-urban areas. By providing small loans and other financial services, SMT empowers poor clients to generate more income to help their families, improve their wellbeing, and create a more vibrant private small-business sector in Sierra Leone.

This is a Group Loan

In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a larger group of individuals. The group is there to provide support to the members and to provide a system of peer pressure, but groups may or may not be formally bound by a group guarantee. In cases where there is a group guarantee, members of the group are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members in the case of delinquency or default.

Kiva's Field Partners typically feature one borrower from a group. The loan description, sector, and other attributes for a group loan profile are determined by the featured borrower's loan. The other members of the group are not required to use their loans for the same purpose.